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3.one day I fell in your ocean

by Richard Trotter

3.One day I fell in your ocean
    “Someone will come along soon” Chris ( AKA squirrel head ) told me as we sat in the pub after closing. And sure enough, there was a new person for me to admire. Her name was Alex and she had transferred from another Wetherspoons a few days earlier. She was sweet and had the prettiest eyes. We had briefly spoken and all too soon I was smitten. I sat in the booth with Karen on my break as Alex glided around the floor taking out food and collecting plates. “Go and talk to her Richard” my Mancunian acquaintance encouraged For two days I pleasantly dreamed and I was happy to have that dream, a tiny chance of things getting better. A speck on the horizon to hope for. Lewis decided to tell Alex that I fancied her and with this my armour fell to pieces.
   “You need help getting a woman” he said and used this as his logic. By this point I reckoned I was doomed. Alex was too nice for me and I knew that my confidence and self esteem wouldn't create a good impression. I heard conflicting reports about her reaction and I dreamed a bit more. A fantasy as an icy wind blew upon an humiliating wound. Being infatuated was a high for me and I soared into the purple dreaming clouds. But like with the drugs that various people I knew took, the comedowns were equally harsh in their power and imagination.
Over the next few days conflict and harsh words fell upon me like rain from a toxic cloud. My relationship with Sarah in the kitchen fell apart leading to a big row at the end of the week about a joke she'd made about me. “ You always say horrible things to people.. No one wants to speak to you because you're so miserable” she had earlier complained. Then a drunken Vinny told me I had no chance with Alex.  Daz told me that writing about how I'd felt about Sally was “borderline stalking”. I tried to respond but he laughed in my face.
    On Thursday I met a couple of old work colleagues, Sian and Anthony in the pub after closing. I told them about Alex and they asked me if I was over Sally. They were both kind people, a contrast to those who I'd been upset by. Anthony gave me some information which felt like my view of history was being rewritten. He said that Sally had once said she sometimes didn't want to work in the same pub as me. This was unbelievably harsh given that for the great majority of the time I had been too shy to even talk to her, and we had never gotten to know each other. He also said that at times she would swap her break so she wouldn't have to come upstairs when I was working. I wasn't ashamed of how much I'd liked her and I had never done her any harm. I saw the past in a new light and wondered why I'd wasted so long on someone who had never been that nice to me. She had never been flattered by how I felt, instead she had been cold and aloof. When I showed her the poem she'd inspired ,all she could say that it was a “well constructed poem
     Work was stressful and tiring and the atmosphere of put downs and accusations dragged me down. The embarrassment of Alex knowing I liked her was like a heavy weight strapped to my back, especially given that at least four other people fancied her. She was like a palace burning  in the middle of a bleak snowy wilderness drawing everyone to her. If life was about making progress and not just staying afloat then I was getting nowhere. My fragile state of mind was constantly bombarded with my own Jenga- like anxieties and the cruel world in which I lived.

01/27/2007

Posted on 01/27/2007
Copyright © 2024 Richard Trotter

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